The Bad Piano Player

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player goes back to the 1970s, and finds some classics hiding in the cellar of the Billboard top 100. Hope you can drop by for the memories. Tunes ahoy!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player returns to a topic that got the most downloads last season. And I’m not just doing it to enhance my popularity in Taiwan. Please enjoy Baby Songs Two!

Send us Fan Mail The Bad Piano Player returns to a stalwart, a composer everybody knows and nobody knows with our fourth Harry Warren episode. Seven fabulous songs from the master of melody and progression, with Lyrics by Johnny Burke, Gus Kahn, Al Dubin, Ira Gershwin, Edgar Leslie, Mort Dixon and Joe Young. Only the best for my listeners. Tune in for tunefulness!

Send us Fan Mail This week the bad piano player features lyricist Lew Brown, born Louis Brownstein in Odessa , Russia in 1893. He estimated that he had collaborated on more than seven thousand songs in his career. We’re learning a small percentage of those for this episode. Tune in!

Send us Fan Mail This week the bad piano player rights a great wrong and finally does a second Gus Kahn episode. The lyricist extraordinaire, who worked with literally every major popular song composer from 1915 to the early 1940s. First featured in season 1,  episode 11, he makes his encore appearance now in season 7, episode 186. Words for the tunes, my friends.

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player does his second-ever Blues episode, featuring composer Clarence Williams, 1893-1965. Six of his best, five provided by our special friend Norman. Tune in for some blues history and some great blues played by a bad pianist!

Send us Fan Mail This Fortnight Tuesday, the bad piano player returns to Broadway to feature a great composer who was active on the Great White Way for more than forty years. Tune in for the Cy Coleman story and stay for the songs.

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player pulls together six songs from the (kind of) miscellaneous file and makes a wonderful episode out of them. We call it Grab Bag Four. Tune in and see if you can spot your favorite!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player goes even further back into obscure composers of the American songbook, to find George Meyer 1884-1959, born in Boston and wrote a lot of music, including the classic For Me And My Gal, which, you guessed it, we won't be doing. Tune in for the tunes, stay for the lyrics!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player finally gives a songwriter a rare fourth episode. We had to find six really depressing Tom Waits songs, but luckily, he wrote a lot for us to choose from. No repeats fourth T Waits. Tune in and wallow in the Brechtian mood swings on this one, kids.

Send us Fan Mail This week the Bad Piano Player revisits Mack Gordon, the cigar chomping, fun loving American lyricist, and Harry Revel, the reserved British composer, for the third time. Are all the songs classics? Well if they aren't, kids, they OUGHT to be. Tune in for the sparkling gems of yesteryear!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the bad piano player features another famous sister act, the New Orleans close-harmony trio of Vet, Connie and Martha, the Boswell Sisters. Their unique sound - well, we won't be able to reproduce that - had a profound effect on the music of the 30's and 40's, and their influence as singers continues to this day. Tune in and hear their songs and story.

Send us Fan Mail To open Season 7, (!!!) The bad piano player and the improving singer brings you songs by the great unknown American composer Pete Wendling. Composer of Yacka Hula Hickey Dula. Which means, Tune In! in Hawaiian. Welcome one, welcome all! See you around the piano.

Send us Fan Mail The Bad Piano Player presents a special Christmas episode just for you. And you, and you, and you, too. I checked the list twice and you all qualify! We feature Holiday songs you may not know, some you might, and old-friend composers and lyricists like Gus Kahn, Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke, Meredith Willson. Listen to this one in front of the fire with a full stocking and a hot...

Send us Fan Mail For our Season Six Finale, the bad piano player and the improving singer revisit the composer Hoagy Carmichael, learning six songs never before done on the podcast. Some you might know, I'm guessing most you won't. Thanks for a wonderful season six. Christmas episode coming December 16th and season seven starts January 20, 2026! See y'all there!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the Bad Piano Player features the Kansas City Mozart, the vaudeville teenage improviser, the composer with the mostest, sometimes referred to as the "Female Gershwin". Finally in her own episode, the great Dana Suesse. Tune in to hear me try to pronounce her name!

Send us Fan Mail After featuring him in a team episode (with Irving Kahal) and several times with single songs in other episodes, Sammy Fain finally gets his very own episode. Six of the best from this incredibly versatile, completely self-taught composer. Tune in for great tunes!

Send us Fan Mail This fortnight Tuesday the Bad Piano Player does a special episode of songs that lay dormant for many years before bursting onto the charts. We call it Not Hits -- Hits! Tune in for the discoveries. 

Send us Fan Mail This week, the Bad Piano Player gives it his all with Bandleader, composer, arranger, and occasional movie actor Ted Fiorito. Never heard of him, you say? Well, then you're in for a gigantic treat, aren't you? Come for the tunes, stay for the tunes. Tune in!

Send us Fan Mail This week, episode 171 of the Bad Piano player podcast, we feature the great composer Harold Spina with his own episode. We learn six of his songs. And I play them. Badly. (It's in the name, people). Maybe not too badly. I also sing them, not too badly, I hope. And Elroy has an announcement. Kidding! He'll be playing with his phone as usual. Tune in anyway.

Send us Fan Mail The Bad Piano Player beats the post-Labor Day blues with a new episode we call 1960's Romance. Six songs from the nineteen-sixties, speaking of lost love, found love, misplaced love, "It was here yesterday..."A simple group of songs for a simpler time. Plus some harmonies from Mrs Pretty Damn Good Singer. But you must tune in to hear it!

Send us Fan Mail The Bad Piano Player is in tune with the tides this week, featuring old and new friends with songs about the moon in an episode we call "Moon Songs". Which, according to Elroy, is a catchy title. We're all about the sea of tranquility this week. Tune in and share the Moon light. We learn the songs so you don't have to!

Send us Fan Mail This week, the Bad Piano Player features Big Band Leaders of the 1940s in a special episode we call "Big Band Leaders". Some famous, some not so famous, songs galore, a tale or two and the usual bad piano playing and oversinging. It's what we do! Tune in and be transported.

Send us Fan Mail The podcast features Allie Wrubel this week. Sax player in big bands, Broadway composer, movie composer, Oscar winner, and all around musical fellow. Tune in for tunes! Stay for the bad piano playing! A virtual tour of the Nepotism Studio awaits the winner of next week's sponsorship contest! See you there, kids.

Send us Fan Mail This week, the Bad Piano Player goes way back to an obscure lyricist/occasional composer named Benny Davis. Was that his real name? Did he write any famous lyrics? Is he a member of the Songwriters' Hall Of Fame? To answer these and other pertinent (Where is Elroy??) queries, please tune in, music fans!